No party crashing here: Blacks voting Republican isn't about political independence.

HIP-HOP, once a vibrant political culture, may be irredeemably corrupted by its own success. But there is still hope for the hip-hop generation, the young Americans who grew up during the culture's more inspiring years and those who came of age in its ostentatious aftermath.

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On one hand, the hip-hop generation--Black, white, Asian and Latino--reversed years of regressive racial politics by embracing a common lifestyle that celebrated Blackness. The hip-hop audience, in part because of the culture's influence, became America's first multicultural generation. On the other hand, the hip-hop generation has not stepped out in a meaningful, organized way on any of the significant issues of our day--not Iraq, not Katrina, not healthcare, not the environment.

Harnessing the political potential of the hip-hop generation has been a consternation for many activists and a preoccupation for a few writers, including Bakari Kitwana and Jeff Chang. Enter Keli Goff, a former campaign manager and political communications strategist, now a periodic pundit for CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Goff's new book, Party Crashing: How The Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence (Basic Civitas), attempts to present our current situation as a golden opportunity for young Black voters and the politicians who would court them, but it actually winds up being yet another reminder of this generation's political atrophy.

Goff assembles an admirable synthesis of the many complex factors influencing the Black vote--culture, class, age and religion among them--and draws quotes from prominent players like Al Sharpton, Russell Simmons and Colin Powell. She can be clever and concise. But Goff ultimately squelches her own voice in an endless parade of sound bites from politicians and their advisors, and behind a single telephone poll gussied up as groundbreaking research.

At the heart of Goff's book is a survey of 400 young Black people conducted in conjunction with the Suffolk University Political Research Center. The results aren't exactly a revelation: young Black Americans are becoming less partisan, less beholden to the leaders of the ...